Language Barriers and Team Play

Suibun·Dec 18, 2014·2 votes·990 views

First of all, let me state that I in no way find playing with international folks a bad thing. I know many folks who are a joy to play with in other games that don't speak a lick of English.

In LoL however, there's an issue when it comes to such a communication heavy game and having a language barrier. Many, many times I've had the issue of having teammates not speak any English, and (sadly) I don't speak their language. This seems to be especially prevalent with players from Asian servers, I've noticed, trying to play on NA servers for perhaps faster queue times or some other reason I don't readily understand.

However, this already causes a great deal of grief for the team. Should the player not be able to understand things like "we should perhaps baron" or even something simple like 'I'd like to take top lane, please," this causes a split in the team for those who understand what they're saying and those who don't and vice-versa with them. Without an intermediary translator, it's stuck in this limbo of hoping you can pick out key words or phrases from the other person, which is not always doable. Furthermore, it requires often a lot of outside work (read: google translate) to understand if your teammate is being toxic in an effort to try and understand what on earth they're going on about in all chat when you, nor anyone in your game, understand what in the heck they're saying. Needless to say, I'm not a big fan of being called a "limp dicked faggot" (sic) in Mandarin and only finding this fact out after the game has already ended.

I honestly believe that perhaps there should be some sort of region locking involved within this game given that, for a solo-queue player like myself, it only makes tensions rise and more frustration come of what comes in many League of Legends games. People from all walks of life and all different places are great! Just as any person who has had a frustrating time trying to communicate something to a tourist can attest: trying to overcome a language barrier is not an easy feat a great deal of the time especially when it comes to something as complex as League.

3 Comments

Epilogue of LifeDec 18, 20142 votes

If you didnt say "This seems to be especially prevalent with players from Asian servers, I've noticed", you would have come off as extremely convincing...something I learned from speech and debate is that singling out a group lowers your ethos significantly. Yes, I am salty and offended because I'm an asian who spent 12 years of my 17 years of life in China, fluent, and would prefer speaking Chinese over speaking english....

SuibunDec 18, 20141 votes

Again: I'm just saying this is a common trend I find. Nothing against asian folks, as I have a very deep fondness for asian cultures and the like. Preference is great and fine! All I ask is that if you play on a server that primarily speaks a language to be able to understand and communicate in that language. Surely that's not too much to ask for is it?

LongFur FoxDec 18, 20142 votes

There are some problems with this. While that would be optimal in the case of the European servers then there are far too many languages to possibly have a server for each. In asia this also becomes a problem since countries often lock other people out of their servers. I currently live in japan and i cannot connect to the chinese or korean servers. The lowest ping i get is from NA. I would think other people in japan would play on a japanese server if there were one but there is not. In the end for now you just have to use pings until riot takes over the world and forces everyone to play lol 24/7